


no sweeping exits or offstage lines

by andawaywego



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: F/F, Some angst, mentioned Homophobia, some language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "Jason looks away. He shouldn’t be watching Trini fall apart and Kimberly putting her back together again because there’s no one else to do it.That’s not his place."Trimberly from Jason's perspective.





	no sweeping exits or offstage lines

**Author's Note:**

> okay so Jason and Kim are platonic soulmates fight me.
> 
> this has some angst and a little violence in it, but I promise it ends happy. 
> 
> jason and kim are 100% platonic in this btw and Trimberly is on
> 
> no worries
> 
> I wanted to put some Jason/Billy in this, but worried it took away from the point of the story and took it out.
> 
> and to avoid confusion, I did change the usual timeline for AP test results to fit everything in before we get too far into the summer after graduation.
> 
> anyway, read on.

 

_…_

**_no sweeping exits or offstage lines_ **

…

_“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “We could have had such a damned good time together.”_

_“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”_

_.._

 

He’s seven when they meet during trick-or-treat in their elementary school. He’s dressed as Batman and she’s in a Winnie the Pooh costume with her ears sliding off her head and they collide accidentally when he goes to turn around.

His candy goes everywhere and, later, he’ll remember her saying, “Sorry!” and helping him scoop it back up into his little jack-o-lantern basket.

Mr. Rafelli, the teacher they’re closest to, sets down his bowl of candy for passing out and says, “Are you two okay?”

And she nods. Says, “We’re good!”

She gives him some of her tootsie rolls for good measure and he watches her disappear with her class down the hallway.

.

But Kimberly Hart isn’t anything special to Jason until two weeks into their senior year.

He’s known her for years at that point—somehow never took account of her long, brown hair or that way she bites her lip when she’s concentrating, somehow never put her on the pedestal she lives on for everybody else—and it’s right at the beginning of their senior year in their shared AP Literature class.

They’re reading _The Crucible_ and Jason doesn’t like it because it’s sad and because his teacher made him read three straight days as Ann Putnam because there are only twelve people in the class and only three of them are boys.

He hates Ann Putnam, hates her pointed fingers and how everyone is just _so_ stupid because witchcraft isn’t something you should murder a bunch of people over.

On the third day, the teacher asks a question none of them know the answer to.

Says, “ _The Crucible_ is full of redemption and sin, right up to the end. Even John Proctor at the end seems more concerned with his wife’s forgiveness than he does about his impending execution. What are your thoughts on that?”

The room is silent, shuffling. Jason, like everyone else, pretends to be busy inspecting his notes.

Finally, Kimberly raises her hand in the back of the class and the teacher smiles at her.

“I think it’s stupid,” she says, and some of the other kids in class snicker behind cupped hands. Jason smirks a little.

Mrs. Ritter smiles too, and says, “Care to elaborate?”

Kimberly shrugs. “It’s not cathartic. Not really. He has his _goodness now_ or whatever but it doesn’t save him from being hanged. He should be more focused on the fact that he’s about to die, not on whether or not he’s a good person.”

Mrs. Ritter nods and says it raises a good point. Moves on to take another opinion from the front of the room and Kimberly slouches in her seat. Jason can see it from where he’s sitting and his eyes follow her movements.

She rolls her pencil back and forth on her desk and it takes him a second to remember how to breathe, because she’s beautiful and somehow he’d never noticed before.

He’s fascinated with shape of her shoulders and the way she isn’t looking up, isn’t even pretending to pay attention and it’s different than when he dated Hannah. Different than the fascination that came into play before he’d asked her out.

But he’s not sure how.

Kimberly doesn’t say anything else for the rest of class. When the bell rings and everyone gets up, she closes her copy of the play and gets to her feet and he watches her. Watches as she returns the Kimberly Hart he’s seen before. For years.

The Kimberly Hart that he sees in the hallway with Ty Fleming. The Kimberly Hart that wears her cheerleading uniform to school on Fridays in the fall and who he can sometimes just see cheering in front of the bleachers when he’s not being tackled by the other team.

She’s different like this. Sadder, somehow, in a way that he can’t pinpoint the reason for and he’ll figure out tomorrow—when news spreads of the Ty and Amanda incident, when Kimberly Hart is suspended for a week and then returns with bruised knuckles and a detention slip good for the rest of the year—that she might know what it’s like to put a noose around someone’s neck and drop the floorboards, to put boulder after boulder on their chest, to push someone into the ocean with their hands bound.

She passes by him in the hallway with Ty, saying, “Stop it,” in this playful voice that almost sounds put on.

He watches her disappear around the corner.

.

When he busts his leg and nearly his head, when he ruins his future and can’t play football, when he lands himself in detention for the rest of the year just so he can _graduate_ , Jason sort of stops expecting things.

He thinks maybe he understands _The Crucible_ a little better, but by then the test on it is over and they’re reading _Bless Me, Ultima_ and he only got a 73% so what does it matter if he _gets_ it anyway?

Kimberly comes striding into the school like she owns it still, even after all that stuff that happened with Amanda Blakely.

He slaps what’s-his-face because he wants his hand to sting, wants him to just _shut the fuck up_ and it’s the best way to ignore the way his knee is creaking, throbbing, as he takes his seat.

Billy Cranston seems to appreciate it. Sends a handful of thankful looks Jason’s way.

When Kimberly comes back down the stairs all he can think of is Rapunzel freeing herself from the tower, no prince involved, and he wonders if maybe she’s her own executioner.

.

“We _do_ know each other,” he says, because he’d like to think it’s true but Kimberly gives him this look like it can’t possibly be.

It hurts more than he has words for.

But then it doesn’t matter anyway because there’s Billy exploding something as usual and then they’re running and—

Kimberly doesn’t follow him. She follows that loud-mouthed girl that almost broke her neck and he’ll tell himself later that it was sign one, when really the first sign was the way he saw Kimberly grip the other girl’s shoulder as that train smashed into them.

.

He finds out he’s some sort of alien superhero and honestly, he’s pretty sure he’d be more surprised if his dad told him he was proud of him.

Being a superhero isn’t so bad.

.

But apparently their first villain is going to be.

He has nightmares the first three nights. Dreams of his family disintegrating behind him and the others are there—he can see Zack up ahead, feel Billy’s hand on his arm, see Trini falling to her knees.

He can see Kimberly dropping down beside her.

And then he wakes up in a cold sweat.

Every time.

.

They don’t all seem to get along, but Kimberly is on the same page as him most times.

None of them, it seems, are on Zack’s page.

Billy plays the part of moderator and Trini snarks in the background, always. Jason feels some sort of deep affection for them that nearly staggers him some days when it first starts, and he ignores all of this.

Stops fighting with Zack because Billy can morph and wraps Trini’s knee for her when she busts it during training.

The night they spend around a fire, he thinks he understands her a little better when her eyes linger on Kimberly.

Thinks maybe they have something in common after all, but he doesn’t say that.

.

When Kimberly tells him about Amanda, he’s not surprised. He’d heard already.

He thinks of _The Crucible_ and how she’d looked in class. That had been days before what happened. Before Ty had broken up with her. Before she’d punched him right in the face.

He tells her the truth and skips what he thinks she may want to hear.

.

Except Billy dies and Jason is numb standing on that stupid dock until Kimberly says, “Help me pick him up,” and then he starts crying.

Kimberly is his best friend, he realizes, dragging Billy down through the water and to the ship, looking at her with her hair drifting back and away. She is without doubt the only person he’s ever understood like this.

But Billy, maybe, had understood him, too. All of them do maybe, he thinks, looking over at Trini and Zack and says, _This is what matters._

When Billy comes back, it’s different. But Billy hugs him back without hesitation, two arms tight around Jason’s middle and he says, “Welcome back.”

.

They beat Rita.

Jason is only a little surprised.

.

Instead of relief, it seems the victory only serves to make Trini more confrontational.

She’s awful for a solid week, the bags under her eyes getting worse and worse, and she’s flaky too. Disappears after training every single day.

“She’s going through a lot of stuff, I think,” Kimberly says one day after practice, after Trini snapping at Jason and jumping up through the water to leave. “I don’t think she’s been sleeping well since—”

“She’s been terrible ,” Jason says, but it sounds sort of affectionate, even to him.

Because he loves Trini. Of course he does. He’d die for her every day of the week if it meant she’d stop scowling like that.

Kimberly sighs, then grabs at Jason’s hand and holds it loosely. “I might try to talk to her.”

“You should,” Jason says. “Let me know.”

She drops his hand when Billy comes up and starts on a story Jason can’t stop laughing at, though he couldn’t retell it later if he tried.

.

But Trini doesn’t get better and she skips training the next day. It’s not a good idea, maybe, but his mom is in bed by ten and his dad is going to be on the boat all night and—

His window is easy to sneak out of.

Trini’s house isn’t far. A lot closer, it feels like, now that his knee has been healed.

Mostly healed. Still aches on occasion.

Like, now. Climbing up the side of Trini’s house to knock on her window.

He’s only been over once before and he’d gone in the front door that time, and the others had been with him as they’d met Trini’s mom, assured her that she _does_ have friends and that those friends aren’t criminals.

Alien superheroes now, but not criminals.

It’s a warm, drifting October night and he kneels on the roof by her window and peeks inside. There’s a light on just inside, he can see that, and he’s maybe two seconds away from knocking when he realizes the window is open, shifting the curtains back and forth and he can hear voices.

Two of them.

Kimberly is inside with her. She’d decided to talk to Trini after all, and Trini is sitting on her bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, forehead resting on them, and Kimberly is sitting on the floor, back pressed into the mattress just below.

“—here for you, Trini,” Kimberly is saying. “You don’t have to pretend you’re alone anymore.”

 Trini laughs. Jason watches her shoulders shake, watches Kimberly’s face fall the slightest bit before he sighs, and he’s grateful she made it here before he did.

He doesn’t have half the patience she does in that moment.

“Look, you guys are shackled to me, okay? By these stupid coins.” He hears something hit the wall and when he looks, Kimberly has turned to look at Trini. “And yeah, we’d all fucking die for Billy Cranston, but we don’t have to pretend we’re like…besties or whatever.”

Kimberly turns a little, presses the side of her head into the mattress so she can look up at Trini and says, “Have you ever read _The Crucible_?”

Outside, Jason smiles a little in confusion and then realizes he’s holding his breath.

Trini finally pulls her head up and looks down at the other girl. “What?”

“It’s about the Salem Witch trials? Arthur Miller?”

Trini shakes her head.

“Well, there was this guy, right? In real life, too. And he was accused of being a warlock, but he refused to plead one way or the other so they tortured him.”

Jason is still smiling, thinking of their AP Lit class, and Kimberly looks sad. A little confused. A little embarrassed that she’s saying all of this.

“This is a fun story, Kimmy,” Trini says quietly, her forehead back to her knees. “You should tell it at parties.”

“They pressed him to death,” Kimberly continues anyway, shaking her head, and Trini has her head back up and is leaning forward now. “Put a board over his body and put these huge rocks on him, telling him to plead innocent or guilty, but he just kept saying _More weight._ More weight.”

Jason isn’t sure—it’s hard to see—but he thinks Trini’s shoulders are shaking just the slightest bit.

“Rita really fucked you up, didn’t she?” Kimberly asks, and he can just see Trini nod.

She has her forehead back to her knees, shoulders shaking a little and he watches as Kimberly reaches up and grapples for Trini’s hand.

“Trini—” she says. It’s so gentle.

“Shit,” he hears Trini whisper, her voice sounding fractured.

Kimberly is all swift movements after that, reaching up and pulling Trini down until they meet in the middle—Trini slumping a bit to the side, off the mattress, as Kimberly rises to her knees and pulls Trini into her arms.

Jason looks away, presses the tips of his fingers into the shingles beneath him. He shouldn’t be watching Trini fall apart and Kimberly putting her back together again because there’s no one else to do it.

That’s not his place.

He shifts on the roof and starts to slide his way back down to the ground, and on his way, he hears Kimberly say, “I’d die for you, too. Not just Billy. I’d die for you, too, Trini.”

There’s a piece left out. An _I already have_ or an _I almost did_ that would maybe make the difference, but it doesn’t matter.

He thinks she says something else, but he can’t hear it.

He _can_ hear Trini though—her laugh soggy and soft and more carefree than he’s ever heard from her.

.

The next day, Trini is smiling again. Sparring with Zack like nothing happened and Jason sits next to Kimberly in the pit and watches.

“She’s in a good mood today,” he says and Kimberly nods, smiling.

“Yeah,” she says.

And it’s one of the better days Jason thinks he’s ever lived in. He puts a hand on Trini’s shoulder when they’re walking home a little later and it’s only a little shocking when she leans into him, Kimberly smiling at him from his other side.

.

It’s Kimberly who meets his parents first, who drops by after training one day to stick an icepack to his bruised ribs, and she’s perfect at dinner.

Laughs at the right points, accepts compliments graciously, says, “Nothing I can’t handle,” when Jason’s dad asks if he’s giving her any trouble, only half-joking.

When she leaves with a wink and a, “See you tomorrow, captain,” in response to his apologies about her being roped into dinner, his mom corners him at the door.

They watch Kimberly back out of the driveway and give this little wave out the window and then his mom says, “She’s wonderful, Jason. You have good taste.”

And Jason doesn’t have the heart to say that that’s not even _close_ to what this whole thing is about.

.

“Heard you and the missus had a nice little dinner last night,” is how Trini greets him at lunch the next day.

She’s sitting beside Zack who is actually at school for once, struggling to open his carton of chocolate milk.

Jason takes it from him and opens it before sitting down and handing it back.

“Thanks,” Zack says, then grins. “Why weren’t we invited? Are you…Are you ashamed of us?”

He puts a hand over his heart in true dramatic fashion and Billy shakes his head from beside Jason.

“Of course not. Right, Jase?”

Jason smiles. “Right, Billy.”

Trini leans towards him across the table with that mischievous glint in her eyes that she sometimes gets, that somehow, inherently, makes Jason swallow nervously. “I’ll hold you to that, Scott.”

When Kimberly arrives a second later with her lunch tray, she frowns at them and says, “Did I miss anything interesting?”

Trini shakes her head and says, “Nope. Just discussing your impending nuptials with the groom himself,” and Kimberly rolls her eyes, sits down on Trini’s other side, and steals half her tater tots.

Jason watches the whole thing, the relaxed pose Trini falls into with Kimberly beside her, and wishes he could show his mom _this_ and say, _I’m not the only one with good taste_.

But that’s not the point either, so he lets it slide.

.

Apparently, though, they weren’t kidding and that Friday evening, the others descend on the Scott household en masse.

Zack pushes his way in and shakes Jason’s mom’s hand a little too firmly and Billy introduces himself and proceeds to spend the next three hours helping Lizzie with her homework at the dining room table.

His mom says, “Kimberly! Good to see you again,” and hugs her like they’ve been friends for years, which makes Trini grumble instead of giving a formal greeting.

Dinner is spaghetti and Jason is glad his dad is gone for the night with Zack slurping his pasta like that.

His mom seems happy to have so many people to entertain and she pesters all of them about their interests, their grades, the colleges they’re looking into.

None of them really have good answers, though, so the conversation is just the tiniest bit stilted.

Jason thinks his mom is on the verge of asking Kimberly about homecoming, about whether or not Jason has asked her yet, but all of it sort of gets interrupted when Billy says, “I’m not sure who thinks my foot is someone else’s, but it’s probably best for me to say something. So, um…that’s _my_ foot.”

And when Kimberly gets red in the face and Trini coughs embarrassedly into her fist, Jason watches the dots connect in his mother’s eyes and the subject is dropped.

.

Things are only easy for a little while and then some of Rita’s leftover monsters come knocking one evening when Kimberly is out on patrol with Trini.

It’s been quiet. Very quiet and peaceful and it must have been surprising for them to be cornered like that by six monsters like that and—

Jason is watching TV with his sister when he feels it.

This shattering in his chest that is so overwhelming he has to lean forward for air. Images of Kimberly in her armor being knocked backwards, being pushed into a wall and crushed by the rubble that falls, the sound of her scream shocking and loud and then silent.

He can’t stand it. Lizzie panics and tries to push him upright, yells for his mom, for his dad.

But when they come stumbling into the room, he’s already up and out of the house anyway.

Morphing before he gets halfway down the street.

.

When he gets there—to the empty, collapsed office building just a block away from the crystal, from the Krispy Kreme—Trini is already pushing the rubble off of Kimberly, the broken remains of the putties that did this being kicked aside as she shouts, “Kim! Kim! Fucking answer me, you asshole!”

Jason is frozen, panicked and numb, and he’s trying to remember what he said to her last because he’s pretty sure that, _Be careful, call if you guys need me,_ are the worst sort of dramatic irony.

He feels Billy before he sees him, feels that buzzing under his skin that comes with close proximity and Billy brushes into his shoulder.

“Oh my god,” Billy sighs and then he’s right over there with Trini, tugging rocks out of the way.

It isn’t until they find her that Jason finds it inside of himself to move. Trini pulls Kimberly into her arms and says, “You weren’t supposed to _actually_ die for me,” in this really broken voice that Jason honestly can’t handle right now.

He can’t think. He wants to sob but Trini is doing that already and Billy is talking to Alpha-5 through his communicator.

Zack arrives late, lives the furthest away from downtown, but it’s just in time for Alpha-5 to transport them to the ship.

.

Kimberly is set down on a bed in the medical bay of the ship and Alpha-5 immediately starts to fuss over her, listening to Zordon’s instructions from the wall and they bicker back and forth in that language none of them can understand yet.

Her armor falls away after a moment and then she’s just lying there in the same outfit she wore to school earlier and—

Jason excuses himself. Needs air, needs _something._ Can’t do this right now.

He’s angry. Hurting. He tries to hate her and comes up short. His hands are trembling at the thought that she might die because girls like Kimberly Hart shouldn’t be allowed to come into your life and then disappear like this.

Suddenly and painfully.

When he punches the rocky wall outside the ship, he doesn’t feel anything, but his knuckles come away bloody and there’s a fist-sized hole where he’s just hit. His hands keep shaking.

Thoughts of Billy on that dock are making his head spin and his brain keeps putting Kimberly there, wet and soaking and lifeless. He imagines having to carry her body down here the way they’d had to do with Billy.

Imagines her not coming back.

He can’t do this again.

He throws up in the dirt.

.

It feels like hours before someone finds him, before Trini comes out and sits on the ground beside him.

“Alpha thinks she’ll wake up soon. It was just the shock. Some trauma. She’ll be okay.”

All of it comes out in a rush of air that Jason can’t really wrap his head around, but tries to anyway.

“It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’m the one who—”

She doesn’t finish and, when he looks over, her eyes are shut. He’s suddenly so nervous that she’s going to start crying again that he reaches out and puts a hand on her wrist. Wraps his fingers around it gently until she looks at him.

“It’s not your fault, either. It—”

“Come on,” she says, cutting him off, and he can hardly believe that he’s supposed to be the leader when she takes his hand and pulls him inside.

.

Trini doesn’t let go, either, and Jason has hardly ever been so thankful before.

Zack and Billy are inside with Alpha-5 and Kimberly is asleep or unconscious. Jason isn’t sure because he’s not positive how much time has passed, if maybe the sun is up outside already and they’re late for school.

Kimberly’s face is bruised, her left eye swollen somehow even with her armor having been on. Trini sits down on the edge of the bed and keeps hold of Jason’s hand and he just stands there, watching Kimberly’s shallow breathing.

Eventually, she tugs him closer and places their hands over Kimberly’s and he runs a thumb over her bruised knuckles.

When Kimberly wakes up, she blinks a couple of times and then frowns, whimpers a little in pain before any of their relief can settle in.

Billy surges forward and then stops himself and Jason goes to pull away because there’s nothing he can say to fix this.

But Trini keeps a firm hold on him so he can’t move and it’s her that reaches out, brushes some of Kimberly’s hair out of her face.

 “Ow,” Kimberly mumbles.

“I’m sorry,” Trini says. “I—I wandered off and I shouldn’t have let you—”

She doesn’t finish. Just kinda silences herself on her own.

Kimberly shakes her head and then winces in pain, whispers, “Don’t be. I’d do it again,” in this really slurred, almost drunken way.

Alpha-5 putters around saying a lot of things in his tinny voice, but Jason doesn’t hear any of it. Only hears Kimberly’s answers.

Hears her say, “None,” and, “It’s Thursday,” and, “They came out of nowhere.”

Then Zordon’s booming voice, trying to sound gentle and quiet as he says that Rita’s magic was strong. That her underlings could sprout up anywhere, everywhere. At any time.

Zack makes a snide comment and Billy responds.

All of them are crowded around Kimberly, but no one gets closer than Trini. Like some sort of unspoken rule that she should be the one touching Kimberly the most right now.

Zack puts a hand on Jason’s shoulder and Billy clenches and unclenches his fists beside them. Jason’s hands stop trembling and he feels Kimberly squeezing his and Trini’s fingers the littlest bit.

He lets himself watch them, his teammates: Zack’s tired and worried eyes; Billy biting his lip and standing there without his armor on in plaid pajama pants; Trini’s messy hair and her jeans, a sweater that says _Got Spirit? Angel Grove Varsity Cheer_ ; Kimberly, lying there, battered and bruised, and beautiful as ever even with her eye swollen shut. Her lips are paler than normal and she looks more human, much younger, than she has in a month or so.

Maybe ever.

The room is dimly lit. Everywhere on the ship is.

Zack squeezes his shoulder, says, “Between you and Billy, I’m gonna have a fucking heart attack before I’m twenty.”

It’s not funny, but it’s a relief to hear a joke about it already.

Just hours afterwards.

Kimberly laughs, too.

.

Kimberly returns to school on Monday and her eye is already healed, having spent the weekend at Trini’s to avoid her parents’ questions until her power coin activated and healed her the rest of the way.

She’s wearing a yellow flannel and he sees her in the hallway with Trini, leaning beside her locker and looking for all the world like she hadn’t nearly died last week.

Jason sort of hates how oblivious they are, how it’s not his place to point it out.

.

The buddy system for patrol is heavily enforced after that. No wandering.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to when you’re walking around town at night. Someone like Billy to keep up a steady stream of conversation, someone like Zack to make inappropriate comments and then switch to a very deep, very real conversation in the next five seconds.

Jason only patrols with Trini twice and with Kimberly once. More often than not, they go together on their assigned nights.

He sees them one night when he’s looking out his window because he can’t sleep—keeps dreaming of Rita and his Zord crushing inwards, the _heat_ as they were pushed backwards, and not being able to get to Kimberly in the rubble fast enough. It’s late and they’re walking down on the sidewalk just beyond his house.

Kimberly looks up at his window, but must not see him. She looks away after a moment and he watches them until they disappear, watches her hand reach out and blindly grab for Trini’s.

Watches as Trini doesn’t let go.

.

Christmas comes and goes and he and Trini have reached some sort of unspoken understanding.

Like they have come together from loving Kimberly as much as they do or something without either of them having to say that exactly. It’s nice to have someone to study with in his room, but embarrassing when his mom makes him keep his door open.

When his mom asks, “What happened to Kimberly?” in this way that makes him feel the frustration coming up from underneath his skin.

“Scared I’m gonna jump on her baby boy while she’s in the house?” Trini asks the first time it happens.

She’s scrolling through her phone when she’s supposed to be reading him his flash cards for his anatomy test.

Her phone buzzes in her hand and he watches her bite her lip to keep from smiling as she types something back.

“Tell Kim I said hi,” he says, just to make her blush and she whacks him in the head with his own pillow.

.

They read _The Sun Also Rises_ in AP Lit next and Kimberly talks a lot during class discussions about hating Brett, hating her immorality and the way she relies on Jake without being a redeemable character.

Talks about this in the context of the Lost Generation, their hatred and their “bitch women” characters.

The class snickers when she says that word, expecting backlash in the form of Mrs. Ritter sending her to the office or giving her an assignment for her already scheduled detention, but it doesn’t come.

Jason watches her again from the front of class, the way Kimberly sits in her seat with her pencil ready to write something down that she hasn’t thought of yet.

In the hallway, she meets up with Trini and he watches them from his locker. Returns the wave they send his way.

Trini takes Kimberly’s books and they start off down the hall to their Biology class and Jason watches them until they round the corner.

Thinks of Jake and Hemingway and _You learn a lot about a woman by not sleeping with her_.

.

“Are you going to Prom?” Kimberly asks one night when she’s in his room, lying beside him in his bed.

It’s Billy and Zack’s night to patrol and Trini is grounded, which means her house is basically a war zone, so Kimberly had snuck into his window instead.

She looks small beside him. Dwarfed by his height and his old football shirt he’d given her because it’s raining outside—one of those chilly March rains that leaves you shivering for hours. He tugs the blankets over her waist.

“I don’t know,” he says.

She’s not asking him to go with her. He can tell from her voice.

“I think we should go. All of us,” she amends quickly. “We don’t get many chances to be normal teenagers.”

Jason nods and thinks about the college applications he never sent out because none of them can leave. Thinks about his dad’s disappointed looks and disappointed talks and all of the places he’s filled out job applications for in town.

“Yeah. We should go.”

Kimberly lights up at this and he feels her hand on his arm under the covers. “Dope.”

He snorts out a laugh and then they’re quiet for a while.

Just lying there. Listening to the rain on the roof and the windows.

“You should ask Trini to go with you,” he says eventually and Kimberly only looks a little surprised to hear this coming from him.

He feels brave in the dark like this, with Rita so far behind them, and graduation and _real life_ still a few months away.

He thinks Kimberly must, too, because she nods. She says, “Yeah. I think I will.”

.

It must not go well because they can’t morph for a week and practice is rough—sends him home with huge bruises and stiff movements that don’t heal right.

Trini stops picking Kimberly up from class and Kimberly stops coming to lunch.

He tries to talk about it on the third day, tries to get Trini to stop picking at her applesauce across the table and _say_ something, but she won’t even acknowledge him.

He sort of wants to rip that stupid spork out of her hand.

.

Zack and Billy go with them to rent tuxes and he covers the cost of Zack’s when he’s paying for his own.

He figures Zack must figure it out when he goes to settle the bill, but all he does is give Jason an appreciative nod from across the sales floor.

“We look like James Bond,” Billy says when they’re standing in front of the mirrors.

“Yeah, multi-ethnic James Bond to the third power,” Zack says and Jason can hear himself as he laughs—a bright sound that doesn’t sound like him at all.

.

They decide to meet at Kimberly’s house because it’s the nicest, the biggest, the one with the beautiful rose garden out front.

Jason’s mom follows them there and Billy’s mom is there too and all the parents just kind of flock together to take a thousand and one pictures of them all.

“Try to smile, okay?” Jason says when he’s standing by Kimberly, his arm around her waist, pressed into the pink, silky fabric of her dress.

She looks beautiful and she’d walked down the stairs of her house like they were in the fucking _Titanic_ and Jason is still feeling raw, guilty. Because it was supposed to be Trini at the base of the stairs and not him.

Kimberly drives them because Jason still can’t and Zack and Billy don’t have cars.

The radio is on full blast and the windows are down, the spring air whipping in the windows, and Kimberly drives them past Trini’s house on their way to the school even though there are ten other ways to get there.

.

The theme is _Under the Sea_ which is the lamest and possibly has some of the scariest connotations given the Rita thing just last fall, but it’s sort of pretty in the gymnasium at least.

They got rid of the sweat smell, too.

The lights are all blue-ish with blue and green tissue paper taped over them.

“That’s a fire hazard,” Billy says when they hand over their tickets and make their way inside.

“Shit, that’s how Carrie’s prom got ruined,” Zack says and Kimberly shakes her head at him.

“Carrie ruined her own prom by murdering everybody.”

They sit for a while, listen to the music and Kimberly is sullen, sunken in on herself in a way she hasn’t been since before the power coin thing.

Jason tries to get her to talk and Zack tries to get her to dance, but nothing works.

“She’s probably just scared,” Jason says finally, watching Billy and Zack dance awkwardly in the middle of the crowd to _We Didn’t Start the Fire._

Kimberly shrugs and twists her lips to the side, looking so self-deprecating that Jason wants to steal her car keys, drive to Trini’s house, and _drag_ her here.

“Someone wrote ‘dyke’ on her notebook in Bio the other day,” she whispers after a minute. “We’d been working together on a project and…When she went back to her desk, it was there.”

He wants to ask why, but he doesn’t need to.

Teenagers are assholes and Kimberly and Trini have been touchy and obvious for months now. They haven’t tried to hide anything even as they were figuring things out and Jason feels a surge of protective anger come over himself.

His hands are trembling.

Kimberly covers one with her own. “It’s fine. I…I sort of expected this. I have a tendency to fuck up.”

“Hey, don’t take responsibility for someone else being an asshole,” he’s saying before he plans to. “That’s not your cross to bear.”

She shrugs. “I guess.” She’s quiet for a moment and then she sighs. “This…I don’t know, I’ve been looking forward to Prom since freshmen year and I just thought…I really want to—”

Share it with the girl she’s in love with.

He gets it.

Even if they don’t yet. Even if they do.

“Come dance with me,” he says because the DJ just switched to _Wild Horses_ and everyone is swaying back and forth—even Billy and Zack who have their arms looped around each other in an extra dramatic fashion, much to the amusement of their surrounding classmates.

Kimberly starts to protest. “I don’t—”

Jason shakes his head, already getting to his feet and pulling on her hand. “I don’t feel like it either,” he says. “Come dance with me.”

So they dance. Kimberly holds his hand and curls her left arm around his neck and he sways her back and forth.

She smiles at him gently and everything she does, it seems, is infused with sort of sad beauty he can hardly even grasp. So reckless with her insecurities. So reckless in her happiness when it’s there.

Her hair is pulled back as much as it can be and a strand of it has fallen to curl at the side of her face and he’s not sure what makes him say it, but he does anyway.

“I love you,” he tells her. Means every word, but not in the way it would normally mean when a boy tells a girl that at prom.

Kimberly smiles—the first real smile all night. “Love you, too, Jason.”

Her head presses into his shoulder and Zack wiggles his eyebrows at him from where he’s dancing with Billy and it’s maybe three more seconds before Kimberly stiffens in his arms.

When he turns his head, he sees why.

Trini is sliding into the gymnasium in a yellow dress and looking around nervously. He can feel in the moment they see each other, feel Kim’s heartbeat spike in the delicate veins of her wrist, the one pressed into the back of his neck.

“Go,” he tells her, and Kimberly does.

Trini meets her halfway and he can see them talking from where he’s standing completely still on the dance floor.

The smile that twists his lips up when they hug, when they start to dance to the music in each other’s arms, when Trini buries her face into Kimberly’s neck, is genuine.

As is the laugh he lets out when Billy and Zack pull him into their own dance, arms around each other’s shoulders as they sway awkwardly to the beat.

.

He gets a 4 on his AP test and Kim gets a 5.

He doesn’t even pretend to be surprised.

.

Things are different after prom, but no one has the heart to say anything. Trini and Kimberly’s interactions are even more intense after that. Their sparring comes to a crescendo and each time Kimberly pins Trini to the ground, Jason feels like he’s intruding.

One night in May, when they’re sitting around another bonfire at the mine, Kimberly leans into his shoulder, eyes fixed across the fire to where Billy and Trini are having an adamant discussion about the foreshadowing in _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , and sighs.

“I think I’m in love with her,” she says, and her eyes leap to Jason’s nervously.

He smiles and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I think you are, too.”

.

“She’s beautiful,” Trini whispers at training a week later, when Kimberly is up against two simulated putties on her own, flitting around the pit like she owns the place and taking them out without breaking a sweat.

She says it in awe, like she either doesn’t mean to or didn’t expect Jason to hear her, but he does.

“Yeah, she is,” he agrees and thinks of Kimberly biting the eraser of her pencil in class, standing in the corner at the handful of parties he’d seen her at before they officially met, diving off that cliff and into the water.

.

They graduate—even Zack, to all of their immense surprise—and Kimberly is smiling in every single picture they take.

.

The first thing his mind can come up with when he walks in on them kissing—on Kimberly pressing Trini into the counter of the kitchen a few nights after—is, _Finally._

 Her parents are out of town and she invited them all over to celebrate and the night was a little charged between the two of them, with Trini sitting on Kimberly’s lap while Zack and Billy duked it out on Wii tennis—whispering to each other quietly for an hour or two, Kimberly pressing her face into Trini’s neck and Trini smiling, leaning back into her.

And then they made some excuse to go to the kitchen, to grab pizza or sodas or _something_ and they were gone so long that Jason got up to check on them.

Now, here they are. Trini sitting on the counter with her legs around Kimberly’s waist, to even out their height difference a little, and her hands are fisting Kimberly’s hair, Kimberly’s palming the back of her t-shirt.

They look _right_ , he thinks. Like this was always going to happen anyway.

Kimberly lets out this breathy sigh and he thinks that Trini might be crying a little and he can tell that this is new. Either the first kiss or the second, because it’s still so unsure and tentative and mildly eager to learn, like they’re still trying to figure it out.

Jason can imagine being stuck with this for the rest of his life—these girls and Zack and Billy and his stupid destiny and he wants to interrupt and ask Kimberly if she thinks Giles Corey should have just confessed, if this is what taking the rocks off would have been like.

They don’t hear him or see him and he backs away, sneaks his way back to the living room and says, “They’ll be back in a minute,” when Zack asks.

He smiles when they reenter, hands held firmly between them and sitting back down beside him on the couch.

Kimberly presses into his side and Trini drapes her legs over both of their laps and Jason thinks about forgiveness. Thinks, _We are only what we always were_ and John Proctor.

“Whose up next?” Zack asks, holding out his controller and looking at them expectantly.

Kimberly swivels her head to look at Jason and smirks. “Whaddya say, Scott? Think you can take me?” she asks and Trini laughs, grabs at Kimberly’s hand and squeezes.

Jason smiles easily, nothing holding him back. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I can.”

…

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> references:
> 
> "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller; "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway; "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya; "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel; "Titanic"; "Wild Horses" by The Rolling Stones (though I prefer The Sundays cover of that song, which would bring our BtVS references up to 2).
> 
> that song is mentioned and it's where the title is from. the quote is from "The Sun Also Rises".
> 
> catch the obvious Buffy reference (so obvious) in a reread maybe but points if you got it first time through.
> 
> sorry if the crucible stuff was heavy handed. oops. 
> 
> come yell at me, give me prompts, or make me cry on Tumblr at housewithoutwindows.


End file.
